Sarnoff: Goya buys property as it grows west

Published 11:14 pm, Friday, June 15, 2012

Goya Foods, based in Secaucus, N.J., plans a bean cannery in the
Houston area. The Waller County site
is expected
to bring in
115 jobs.

Goya Foods, based in Secaucus, N.J., plans a bean cannery in the
Houston area. The Waller County site
is expected
to bring in
115 jobs.

Photo: Steve Campbell

Sarnoff: Goya buys property as it grows west

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Hispanic food maker Goya Foods has purchased 130 acres west of Houston where it plans to build a bean cannery to serve its growing markets in the western United States.

The facility is still in the planning stages, but the company is expected to break ground this year and open in 2013.

Secaucus, N.J.-based Goya operates canneries in upstate New York and Puerto Rico. The new one will be the largest and most state-of-the-art of the three, said spokeswoman Mayte Weitzman.

"Strategically for the company, this is very key as the growth of the company continues west," she said.

The acreage is at U.S. 90 and Cardiff Road in Waller County. It's near the large Igloo manufacturing facility along Interstate 10. The area was chosen because of its abundance of land and access to rail and water, Weitzman said.

A lawsuit accusing a Houston architecture firm and the developer of 1717 Bissonnet - better known as the Ashby high-rise - of using designs that weren't theirs has been settled.

The suit was filed late last year by Dallas-based Humphreys & Partners Architects, which said the architectural plans for the proposed tower infringed on a copyrighted design.

Developer Buckhead Investment Partners and EDI Architecture raised numerous defenses in the case, according to a statement, including that Buckhead paid Humphreys for its early work on the project, and therefore had been granted the right to use it.

The parties released some of the settlement's details last week. Humphreys said Buckhead will pay it for a retroactive license and give the firm credit in marketing and other materials stating the conceptual design of the building was based on Humphreys' work.

Buckhead said the agreement states that there is no "admission of liability by any party concerning the matters settled" and that it settled to avoid the time and expense of litigation and to move forward on the project.

A federal judge in Houston dismissed the case on May 31, closing another chapter in the saga of the Ashby high-rise, a residential development that has sparked a heated battle between the developers and many neighborhood residents who don't want to see it built.

The developers said they are continuing to make progress on the building's planning and expect to break ground by year-end.

West Oaks Mall

More life is coming to West Oaks Mall.

A restaurant and live music venue called I Love This Bar & Grill has just leased 28,000 square feet in the 1 million-square-foot shopping center at Westheimer and Texas 6.

The name comes from a song by country crooner Toby Keith, who created the chain that serves barbecue and pours beer in mason jars. The new location will have a 95-foot guitar-shaped bar when it opens next spring.

The owners of West Oaks have been trying to bring stability to the property, which has had multiple owners over a relatively short time and saw some big tenants leave.

A Palais Royal opened last year and a 14-screen Edwards Theatre will start showing movies in the fall. The theater is being built where Mervyn's used to be. The Toby Keith restaurant will go into Alamo Drafthouse Cinema's space.

Alamo will close at the mall, but recently said it would open new theaters in Midtown and in the northwest part of town.